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Donald Trump is seen here at a Jets football game next to his campaign manager Susie Wiles, on Oct. 20, 2024. The president-elect has just named Wiles his White House chief of staff.
Who will Trump’s team be?
At last count — yep, they’re still counting ballots from last week’s US election — Republicans looked set for a clean sweep: taking not only the White House and Senate but possibly the House too. With 18 House races yet to be called, the GOP is leading in seven and needs to win just four for a majority.
Attention now turns to the president-elect’s naming of names for the first cabinet of “Trump 2.0.”
Here’s what we know:
Trump has made just one appointment so far: He has named Susie Wiles as the first-ever female White House chief of staff. The 67-year-old veteran Florida political operative ran Trump’s presidential campaign, helping to secure his stunning comeback.
We also know for sure that two people won’t be in Trump’s cabinet: Nikki Haley, who served Trump as UN ambassador but also ran against him in the 2024 primary, and Mike Pompeo, who was Trump’s secretary of state during his first administration.
No other appointees have been made official, so lots of Republicans are jostling for 15 Cabinet positions and various advisory roles.
Names being floated for secretary of state, the US top foreign policy role, include Richard Grenell, former ambassador to Germany and acting DNI director; former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, former Iran envoy Brian Hook, GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
The US Treasury secretary position, which is the top financial position in the US government, is likely to go to one of five men: Robert Lighthizer, the arch-protectionist who helmed the US tariff war with China as Trump 1.0’s US trade representative; billionaire hedge fund managers Scott Bessent and John Paulson; former SEC chair Jay Clayton; and Larry Kudlow, Trump’s former National Economic Council director.
For interior secretary, which oversees management of federal lands, including their use as energy sources, the top names include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, as well as North Dakota’s billionaire Gov. Doug Burgum — both were once considered veep candidates for Trump. Burgum, meanwhile, is also on the shortlist for energy secretary, along with Dan Brouillette, who held the post last time around.
We’ll be keeping an eye on official appointments for these and the other Cabinet positions, as well as for indications of what portfolios go to key supporters like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who may be named a White House health and wellness adviser or even become secretary of health and human services – and Elon Musk, who has himself suggested being named to helm a new department focused on government efficiency.Former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
Nikki Haley: I will vote for Trump
Haley packed up her campaign for the presidential nomination two months ago but did not immediately endorse Trump. She accused him of causing chaos and disregarding the importance of US alliances, pointing particularly to Ukraine aid, which Trump has vowed to end but Haley says is critical. Haley may be setting herself up for a future presidential run, and backing Trump could help win over his voters later.
Speaking at the Hudson Institute, Haley emphasized that Trump must actively engage with her supporters rather than assume their automatic backing – a warning Joe Biden heard loud and clear. The president’s campaign has quietly been organizing a Republicans for Biden group because they see Haley supporters as true swing voters. We’ll be watching to see if any of the hundreds of thousands of Haley voters in each battleground state are willing to be courted by the Democrats.
Nikki Haley
Haley games the GOP’s future
After conceding Trump’s win and leaving the race, she chose not to endorse him. Instead, she announced, it’s the presumptive GOP nominee who has work to do. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that," she said. “This is now his time for choosing.” So far, Trump has responded only by mocking the failures of her campaign.
In the fall, when party unity will be crucial for Trump’s success, how will Haley calculate her odds for future success? Will she fall in line to endorse him, as nearly all Trump’s rivals and GOP sometime-critics, including outgoing GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, have done? Or will she position herself as the one still-politically viable Republican who called him to account for his personal and political failings?
We, and Trump, will be watching.
Trump continues to lead the GOP charge
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. Thought I'd talk about the US election. I try not to do that every week because it would get really boring.
It is, of course, the longest and most expensive and most dysfunctional of any major democracy. And would we have it any other way in the United States? Trump, of course, is getting closer and closer to the nomination on the Republican side. It is all over except for the fact that Nikki Haley does not want to drop out. She is still in it. Her arguments are that everybody should get a chance to vote and that she would be much more likely to win in the general election against Joe Biden.
All of those things are true. But as we all know, that's not the way the US electoral system works. She can't win a single state. She can't come close. South Carolina, her home state, where not just Republicans that are registered, but others can actually vote. So an open primary and she still lost by 20 points, could have lost by more. It was a respectable showing, considering just how popular Trump is. But she's got no shot. And she lost her funding just now from the Koch network, which is a big deal. When they stood up and said that they wanted to give a lot of money to Haley, they understand that they're not going to throw good money after bad.
And so that's done. And she's not likely to be able to stay in very long if she's going to lose significant funding, because she needs to be relevant in terms of the airwaves and get her message out there. She has said that she is not thinking about what's going to happen after Super Tuesday, which is almost certainly not true. But what else is she supposed to say for as long as she's in the race? I think when she loses the slate on Super Tuesday, she's going to be in a lot of trouble.
On the Biden side, no one is really running against Biden. Williamson dropped out, but most people didn't know she was in. Dean Phillips hasn't dropped out. Most people don't really know he's in. But very interestingly and coming up real soon in Michigan, where you have five and a half percent of the electorate, Arab American, and they are deeply, deeply unhappy with the fact that Biden has been so strongly supportive of Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza. And there is a significant campaign in Michigan not to support Biden, but to write in that they don't have anybody that they're in favor of. And if that proves significant, that is absolutely going to hurt the president. It's one of many things that are not going particularly well for him as we think about his effort to secure a second go at the presidency come November.
But the more relevant point in the near term is what happens in the GOP. How does Trump secure the nomination and is everyone behind him or does he lose a significant piece of Republicans? On that front, I think he gets everybody. I've seen so many people that privately have said that they were never Trump six months ago, even three months ago, people that were supporting Chris Christie, high level folks in the Republican Party that are now saying, “well, he's going to be the nominee, he's probably going to be president because they want a Republican to be president. And so we're going to get behind him.” I've seen that with John Thune just come out, the number two on the Republican side in the Senate. Tim Scott, of course, a serious adult, serious conservative who has decided he's going to be as full throated, as supportive Trump is humanly possible. A lot of the billionaires are in that camp. Koch, of course, is going to be there. But also we've seen that with Jamie Dimon coming out of Davos and so many of all of these people that have been privately saying we can't stand the guy, we want anyone but him. But since that isn't going to prove worthwhile or possible, we're going to get behind Trump.
And this is the biggest issue for democracy, he has huge amounts of support in the Republican Party, he has the money that will be behind him. But he also refuses to accept the outcome of a free and fair democratic election. That is fundamental. There's nothing that's more essential to the functioning of a democracy than being able to hold an election that people believe in and transferring power to an opponent if you lose. That fundamental assumption of democracy is something that Trump as strongly disagrees with as anything in his body and showed that off in 2020 and will show that off again in 2024 if it goes against him or if it threatens to go against him.
And the fact that is not close to the issue that exercises all of these people that privately say they can't stand this guy but will get with him, shows that they are not particularly worried about the nature of eroding US democracy. And that reality should be a top concern of American allies around the world. It should be a top hope of American adversaries looking to take advantage of American weakness around the world. It creates and injects a huge amount of chaos into the global system. The most powerful country in the world today is also the one that is least confident about the intrinsic value of its political system, doesn't really know what it stands for, and is going to continue to erode its institutions legitimacy and the strength of its institutions without particular guardrails, at least as far as this electoral cycle goes.
And that is true, frankly, no matter whether Trump or Biden wins. And again, I feel that Trump is clearly unfit for the job and it's not a matter of anything other than what I just said. And I felt that way when he was a Democrat. This has nothing to do with his political party. It certainly has nothing to do with his ideology because Trump isn't fundamentally ideological except in support of his narcissism. But the fact that even under four years of Biden, that the political institutions in the US has have continued to erode, that you continue to have stronger and stronger distance between what is seen as basic facts and belief among Democrats and Republicans. The fact that the United States is becoming more politically tribal and dysfunctional says that Trump is a symptom, a deep symptom, and a strong symptom of something that is profoundly broken in the US system. Something I've talked about for a while.
I'll talk about more going forward, but it does make us very concerned about where 2024 is going. It's why the US versus itself was our number one risk back at the beginning of this year and by a long margin, given the impact of what that means for the rest of the world, while we continue to focus on it all the way through.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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An upside-down sign rests on the frozen ground outside Republican presidential candidate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s campaign event at the Franklin VFW on January 22, 2024, in Franklin, New Hampshire.
Haley vows to fight on after Trump wins New Hampshire
Nikki Haley lost the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, but you wouldn’t have known it based on the response from the crowd at her … non-victory speech. Her supporters erupted in applause when the former South Carolina governor proclaimed she’d earned “almost half” the votes. What happened to Ricky Bobby’s America, where “if you ain’t first, you’re last”?
But in the new normal, losing by 10+ percentage points to former President Donald Trump is, in its own strange way, a feat to celebrate. With 91% of the vote counted this morning, Haley is finishing around 43.2% and Trump 54.5%.
Turnout smashed previous state records -- with 300,000 voters casting ballots in the GOP primary -- a reminder that Trump drives people to the polls, whether in adoration or revolt.
Haley says she will fight on in her home state of South Carolina, where once again she looks certain to get absolutely crushed, by a 2:1 margin if some polls are to be believed. The question now is how long her major donors will keep backing her quixotic campaign. We’ll see if she makes it to Super Tuesday in March.
President Joe Biden, on the other hand, got “almost all” the votes in New Hampshire’s bizarre sideshow of a Democratic primary — and he wasn’t even on the ballot. Democrats rescinded official approval for New Hampshire’s primary after the Granite State refused to budge on its “first-in-the-nation” primary tradition, so the results were never going to count anyway. But if Democratic challengers like Dean Phillips can’t even beat Biden when his supporters are forced to write him in, the question again arises about how long to keep trying.
So don’t fall for the hype among these (literal) losers: Trump is running against Biden in November. And if that doesn’t prove to be the case, it won’t be because of Nikki Haley and Dean Phillips.
Nikki Haley, former U.N. Ambassador and Republican presidential candidate, delivers remarks during a campaign event in Exeter, New Hampshire on Jan. 21, 2023.
Is the GOP primary race locked?
With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis out of the race, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – following her disappointing third-place finish in Iowa – faces Donald Trump alone in the New Hampshire primary today.
Haley is polling at 38% in the Granite State, and even if she wildly exceeds that in votes, she would still lose, giving Trump a decisive advantage ahead of the third primary in South Carolina.
For Trump, it’s all about timing. The 91 felony counts he’s facing are his biggest liability, and Trump’s legal strategy has been to delay the trials while trying to clinch the nomination as quickly as possible.
Between court appearances, he has been running a campaign to win endorsements and change state-level rules to his advantage. After meeting with Trump, the head of Nevada’s GOP barred DeSantis’ super PAC from campaigning in the state, and in California, Trump successfully pushed the state to change its formula for allocating delegates to a winner-take-all system.
Now, as Trump’s momentum gains steam, many in the GOP (Exhibit A: Ron DeSantis) are scrambling to show him their support – a telltale sign that they believe the primary contest is over.
Some critical unknowns
How will the Supreme Court rule? The justices are facing a laundry list of cases making their way through district courts that could influence the outcome of the 2024 election. So far, the court has agreed to hear arguments in Trump v. Anderson on Feb. 8.
The case will determine whether Colorado and Maine can use the 14th Amendment to bar Trump from their primary ballots. At the heart of this case is whether the courts view Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, as insurrectionist. Their answer could have implications for the federal indictment regarding Jan. 6 being pursued by Jack Smith, which will be argued on March 4.
Who will be Trump’s vice presidential pick? Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York is rumored to be a front-runner. Trump’s allies are urging him to select a female running mate to make him more palatable to female voters fleeing the GOP. Other contenders include Sen. Tim Scott, who dropped out of the primary and endorsed Trump early, and Sen. J.D. Vance.
Trump is happy to leave people guessing, telling Fox News, “There's no rush to that — it won't have any impact at all.”
US election: The GOP falls in line behind Trump
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and back in New York City for a Quick Take to kick off your week. Plenty happening around the world, but it is the United States election narrative that seems most important to me this week. Why?
Well, first, Tim Scott endorsed Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis dropped out, endorsed Donald Trump. It is absolutely looking like the GOP is once again Donald Trump's party. The primary season, of course, is not over. Nikki Haley from South Carolina is still in it, but it is hard for me to see how she takes a state. I look at the polls, I don't see what's available to her. She's making a lot of money and certainly there are lots of people that would like to see someone other than Trump, especially because Trump's track record over the last three elections have been so poor and the coattails are challenging, the primaries. You can beat centrists from the GOP, but then when you're actually up in a campaign itself, they've underperformed. So for all of those reasons, there are plenty of people that don't want to see Trump in the presidential race against Biden that Nikki Haley, or just about anybody else would probably beat Biden much more easily.
But Trump is dominant in the GOP, and I think it is all over but for a couple more sort of day cycles. It's hard for me to see how Nikki has a path to the nomination. I guess it is conceivable that she would stay out there and become a never-Trump voice. I personally doubt it. I expect that she will end up endorsing Trump just as almost everyone, except Chris Christie, has that's been going against him. I see across the board the GOP getting in line and becoming loyal to their nominee. And that's important because it looks very likely, increasingly likely, that Trump will indeed be convicted, at least in Washington, DC, in all of these indictments that you see before he is facing the election on November 5th. But if he's convicted after he's already gotten the nomination, the overwhelming majority of those in the GOP are going to say either “it doesn't really count for much. We still support him”, or even “it's politicized. It's not a real case. We think it's a witch hunt, as Trump has been saying. We think we need to go against and investigate the Bidens and those that have supported them.”
So the impeachment schedule for all sorts of characters around the Biden administration grows in a Republican-led House. I'd say dominated, but it's not. They only have a two-seat majority right now. But otherwise, the speaker goes if they don't do their bidding. And also that this doesn't really undermine Trump's ability to be competitive in the election overall. If you made me bet right now, I'd say Trump is 60:40 likely to win the presidency, but I have very low conviction around that.
First of all, these are both very old candidates. Anything could happen to them in ten months leading up to the election. Secondly, there's been all sorts of new unexpected news in a very volatile geopolitical environment. A year ago, no one was talking about war in the Middle East, people saying how stable it was. Now it's dominating the news every day. You really think we get through ten more months without another out of the blue significant geopolitical conflict? Frankly, I doubt it. North Korea would be the most likely to see a true wild card, but massive expansion of the Middle East also certainly plausible. Plenty of other places too. Cyber attacks, challenges with AI disinformation in the US election. This is going to be an electoral cycle that is going to have all sorts of out of the blue risks. And so to come out early and say, I feel confident that Trump is going to win or Biden is going to win, strikes me as pretty foolish at this point.
There was a consensus in Davos that Trump is going to do much better than people think, that Biden should really step down. The Davos consensus is frequently wrong. Does that mean you bet against it? No, it just means it's not a very interesting data points. I don't talk very much about it, frankly, but I do think it's important that all of the people attending, both on the corporate side, the financial side, and especially on the government side, finally do understand that Trump is for real again, that he's getting the nomination and he can easily be the next president. So if that consensus means that European leaders in particular and others are going to start preparing for how they would engage with a Trump presidency 2.0, for how they will respond to a Trump presidency 2.0, how they prepare themselves for the policy implications and the uncertainties of their most important ally being so much more volatile over the course of four years.
I think that is a very positive thing indeed. So that's a little bit of where I see the race right now and what we're going to be expecting real soon. The willingness to jump on board and support Trump no matter what he has said about you before, no matter how he is acted, just like DeSantis is pulling a Ted Cruz. Watch everyone get ready to do that in the coming weeks.
That's where we are. Hope everyone's doing well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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The identity politics trap
From race to gender to profession to nationality, we define who we are in a million different ways. Many people feel strongly about those identities; they are a fundamental part of how we see the world, find community, and relate to each other. But despite good intentions on the progressive left, at what point does focusing on what makes us different from each other hurt our society more than it helps? When does a healthy appreciation for culture and heritage stifle discourse and deny mutual understanding?
On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, political scientist and author Yascha Mounk weighs in on identity, politics, and how those two combine to create the complicated, contentious idea of “identity politics.” Mounk’s latest book, “The Identity Trap,” explores the origins and consequences of so-called “wokeness” and argues that a counter-productive obsession with group identity has gained outsize influence over mainstream institutions.
"I think the important thing is not to build a culture in which we are forced to double down on narrow identities," Mounk tells Bremmer, "in which we cease to build the broader identities, like ones as Americans, but allow us to sustain solidarity with people who are very different from us."